Donald Trump was reeling from the biggest crisis of his campaign on Sunday, after the publication of documents suggesting the wealthy Republican nominee may have been able to escape paying income tax for nearly two decades. Trump did not deny the damning conclusions drawn by the New York Times, which first received the filing in a manila envelope said to have been sent from inside Trump Tower. The Times pointed out in its report that the documents it had obtained did not suggest Trump had done anything illegal. Instead, the Trump campaign embarked on a damage control exercise on Sunday, dispatching surrogates to television talk shows to argue that Trump was clever to exploit the painful collapse of his past business ventures, several of which defaulted on creditors by declaring bankruptcy. In 2012, Trump berated people who don’t pay tax payers, writing: “Half of Americans don’t pay income tax despite crippling govt debt”.

Source: The Guardian October 02, 2016 18:07 UTC